Liftoff

 

“Through endurance we conquer”

                                             Ernest Shackleton

 

We did not even leave New jersey before we were dealt our first challenge. I received an email on the Saturday before our departure from Aerolineas Argentinas that our return flight from Ushuaia Argentina to Santiago Chile had been changed.  The new flight departed four hours later than our original plane and arrived in a completely different connecting airport in Buenos Aires – two hours after our connecting flight was scheduled to depart!  This in turn led to a series of extended and stressful phone calls and chat messages to both Booking.com and Aerolineas Argentinas over the next several days.  It became a vicious circular reference whereby the airline told me I had to work with the agency (Booking.com) and the agency kept telling me that there were no seats available in their system and therefore they were unable to make any changes.  I was ready to explode! It was not until the day before our actual departure that the issue was finally resolved, relieving me of at least one source of anxiety.

But it was not the only one.  Despite the fact that I have traveled quite regularly around the world, I was extremely anxious about this trip for some reason.  I guess making one’s way to the bottom of the earth, beyond most of civilization is a bit different.  There would be no convenience stores or electronic depots if I were to forget something – or if something broke.  Redundancy was key.  I stressed about that and almost everything else.  But based on the weight of my bags, it is hard to imagine I actually forgot anything.  Now I am stressed that I packed too much!  But alas, we have begun our trek and completed our first leg to Houston before boarding our nine-hour flight to Santiago.  If all goes well we will be enjoying a nice Chilean marraqueta and strong coffee before we know it.